


Next Door Down

by Lisse



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Hetalia Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-27
Updated: 2009-03-27
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:22:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisse/pseuds/Lisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which curling is not a sport, damnit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next Door Down

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the prompt "Mexico/Canada", but more gen than anything.

Canada doesn't actually  _mean_ to spend time in Mexico's company, but one of the side effects of being America's neighbor, not to mention his brother, is that he gets dragged into all kinds of agreements and conferences and meetings whether he wants to or not. As a result, he recognizes the other nation on sight: long dark hair, extremely pretty, and deceptively mild-mannered until he realizes her national hobbies are treating soccer as a life-or-death manner and either fixing something America broke or trying to punch him.

"Because of Texas," she says when she takes his bewildered expression as a demand for an explanation. She has a rolling sort of voice, like Spain with sharper dips and harsher edges. "And because he's a brat." There's a note of fondness in her voice, but it's not very strong and nothing compared to the irritation.  
  
Canada is making a mental note to stay out of her line of fire - because she's inevitably going to mistake him for his brother and from the way America's limping around, she has a mean right hook - when she tilts her head to one side and considers him and says, "You're that other one, right? Canada? From up there?"  
  
She points as she speaks, toward what she probably means to be north but which is actually a conference center ceiling.  
  
"Yeah," he says, surprised. "How'd you know?"  
  
"You're not as obnoxious," Mexico says. "The giant bear was kind of a clue, too."

*

Eventually Canada realizes that Mexico considers America something of a little brother - albeit a very  _large_  little brother who is in serious need of a beatdown. The two of them are hard to miss, between America alternately being amused at her and annoyed with her and Mexico yelling at him about immigration and fences and drugged-out frat boys invading her borders every spring. The fiasco inevitably ends in a stalemate, although sometimes Mexico announces that she's still better at soccer, so there.  
  
She probably sees Canada as a brother too, just by extension.  
  
He tries to pretend he isn't a little disappointed about that; it's rare to find another nation that remembers his name.

*

She makes him dinner sometimes, heavy with beans and corn and spices. He tries to return the favor by teaching her about curling, but she tells him pushing a kettle across the ice with a broom isn't anyone's idea of a sport and if he tries to inflict it on her she's preemptively declaring total war.  
  
Sometimes they swap stories about their parents. She rolls her eyes at France and tells him about Spain and this is a common point of interest - something beyond geography and stories about weird things America's done - but then her history goes sideways, empires and temples and language and cosmology that are something outside his experience.  
  
He forgets, watching Mexico bustle in that odd unhurried way she has, that she has too many parents to count - that she is Aztec's child too.  
  
"So is that why you remember me?" he asks.  
  
"I told you," she says, "it's the damn bear, it's not that hard."  
  
But then she stops and smiles - and she is very lovely - and she adds almost as an afterthought, "I've had a lot of names to remember, over the years. One more isn't so hard."

*

Mexico is sitting behind America. The speech he's making in his odd grandstanding way is very serious. She is mimicking him, one hand held up like a puppet.  
  
"Like one big happy dysfunctional family," she says, and the sweep of her free hand makes the statement take in the whole hemisphere.  
  
Canada thinks,  _Doesn't that just figure._  
  
What he  _says_  is, "Yes, of course," and helps her give America rabbit ears when the reporters start demanding pictures.


End file.
